11% of Consumers Want to Buy Virtual Reality Gear

Research into the spending interests of consumers has found that only a small subsection of the industry’s market is interested in purchasing a virtual reality headset.

Newzoo, a market analyst of consumer spending habits, found that only 11% of polled individuals were interested in getting into the VR world. Their choice of respondents focused on internet-connected people aged 10 to 65.

As reported by VentureBeat, Newzoo referred to this presently small figure of VR-interested people as evidence of an ‘early appetite’ building for VR technology. Previous estimations have claimed that the VR market will reach a value of $4 billion by 2020, although VentureBeat’s report of the study suggests that the value might reach ten times the amount, citing SuperData research that claims a value of $30 to 40 billion is likely by 2020.

Newzoo’s research into potential VR buyers found that people who are already keen gamers, with significant amounts of money invested in their hobby, are the most likely to be interested in purchasing VR gear. As mentioned in MCV’s report on the findings, 72% of those interested in owning VR equipment own a gaming keyboard, while 69% own a gaming mouse.

Additionally, Newzoo found that fans of eSports were also a demographic highly likely to be interested in getting into virtual reality. Newzoo discovered that 63% of VR interested consumers considered themselves eSports fans.

These findings do, however, mean that the vast majority of the research’s respondents are not interested in purchasing one of the market’s VR products — Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or the Samsung Gear. This may be because the headsets are too expensive, or that there are not enough big name AAA VR titles, or even that there is simply little interest in VR at all.

Newzoo’s founder and chief executive, Peter Warman, said that VR revenues will ‘remain marginal’ for the moment. “We will leave guestimates on the future size of the total VR market in revenues to the experts in hardware and online retail sales,” he said.

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